Video games ARE protected speech! Happy 3rd anniversary of Brown v EMA! Celebrate with a detailed look at why Leland Yee's law was a failure and an examination of the ONE game it was trying to regulate: Postal 2. http://youtu.be/RhMRKReXWSg - 8 months ago

One of the sillier weapons in the recently released Saints Row: The Third, is the Penetrator, a three-foot long purple rubber dildo affixed to a baseball bat handle. Apparently, such a virtual item runs afoul of Japanese law so the game had to be altered for its release in that country. Now, I’m not going to bother boning (tee-hee!) up on Japanese law so I’ll give Game Informer the benefit of the doubt when it says the “depiction of genital parts” is a no-go in Japan.

Of course, a giant purple sex toy isn’t a genital part so one wonders why it was a problem. One might also wonder why this...

I originally had this idea a few months ago when we first learned that Nintendo would be dropping London Life from Professor Layton’s European release. At the time, the idea was to shoot it as a skit in an actual game store. I’d walk in, grab the game, buy it, notice it included London Life, snatch my money back and walk out. The poor counter jockey would incredulously ask who that was and her manager would walk up from behind her and say, “That was a European gamer.” The counter jockey would look understandably confused then the manager would continue, “According to Nintendo.”

Trust me, the way I planned to shoot it would have been really funny. Unfortunately, that didn’t pan out for a lot of logistical reasons. Oh well.

So, no London Life in the European Layton game. What the hell, right?

Nintendo has gone on record that it wanted to release the game before Christmas but didn’t have time to translate London Life into the various other European languages. Okay, fine but why completely remove it? It’s already been translated into English. Why not allow those that know the language (or are willing to use a translation guide) to enjoy the game? Yeah, those that don’t speak it are going to be understandably miffed but isn’t that better than pissing off everyone?

Someone suggested to me that while London Life may have been localized into American English, it hadn’t been localized into European English. That suggests Nintendo thinks Europeans would rather pass on the game entirely than put up with American spellings which is pretty much the joke I’m making in my video.

Well, luckily the DS is region free so Europeans can import the American or Australian versions if they’re so inclined but here’s a thought: the Professor Layton games have the ability to download new puzzles. A new puzzle is available every week for about six months after the game’s release. Perhaps it would be possible to download extra language options for London Life when they’re ready?

Even if that’s not possible, I don’t see the strategy in removing London Life entirely. What is Nintendo thinking? That by removing London Life, no one in Europe will be upset because they won’t know it’s supposed to be there? This would have worked back in the 80s and early 90s but today, you can’t remove a 100-hour RPG without everyone in the world knowing about it.

Nintendo couldn’t possibly be that ignorant of how the internet works, could it?